A senior Taliban commander says Osama bin Laden is alive and in contact with leaders of Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents, according to an interview aired on British television. Mullah Dadullah said he had not met bin Laden since the fall of the Taliban regime after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, but said “we know he’s still alive.” “He’s not yet martyred. Such information would be easy to get — his comrades stand shoulder to shoulder with us. They keep us informed,” Dadullah said in an interview broadcast Wednesday by Channel 4 News. The authenticity of the information could not be confirmed. Channel 4 did not say how it had obtained the footage, and it was not known when or where Dadullah made the comments, which were translated into English.... http://www.msnbc.msn.com

Police in the so-called "Barbie Bandits" case said they may have an arrest by day’s end, officials said.Surveillance tape caught the two female robbers smiling Wednesday as they handed a teller a note. It was not known if the two were armed or how much money they took.Cobb County police were investigating hundreds of leads and may have an arrest “by the end of the day” on Thursday, Officer Wayne Delk said.Surveillance footage showed the women wearing large sunglasses as they stood at the counter of a Georgia Bank of America inside a Kroger supermarket.The women are described as white and likely between 16- and 24-years old.The bandits were not seen getting into a vehicle and police were examining outdoor surveillance tapes as well as speaking with area school officials....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,255718,00.html

A teenager has been found in Uzbekistan's mountainous region eight years after he was reported missing in 1998, local prosecutors said Thursday. "The boy acts like a wild animal. He is afraid of everything, cannot speak and only makes snarling sounds," prosecutors said, adding that he was found by road construction workers. Experts identified the boy after studying photographs dating back to 1998. His parents recognized the boy, singling him out from among several other teenagers in a lineup. Prosecutors said the boy would be returned to his family following a course of rehabilitation. ...http://en.rian.ru/world/20070301/61418355.html

A big winter storm hit the Plains and Midwest with heavy wet snow and swirling winds that created whiteout conditions Thursday morning. A North Dakota couple were killed when their car overturned. The storm, which could bring a foot or two to some areas by Friday, closed hundreds of schools and some highways. "It is snowing and blowing. The wind is blowing really hard," said Angela Jones, of Superior, Wis. "The flag out there is whipping around." Jones, a mother of two, decided to stay home with her children after their day care center closed for the day as a blizzard warning was posted. "I am glad I didn't have to go out in this," said Jones, 31. Blizzard conditions — heavy snow and wind gusts above 35 mph — were reported in parts of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota....http://www.usatoday.com/weather/stormcenter/2007-03-01-blizzard-minn_x.htm?csp=34

President Robert Mugabe's government will maintain a ban on political rallies and protests in the capital, Harare, for as long as there is a "breakdown of law and order", state media reported on Thursday.Zimbabwe last week imposed a three-month ban on all rallies and demonstrations in many of Harare's volatile poor townships, following clashes between police and opposition supporters.The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the main opposition party in the southern African nation, has condemned the decision, likening it to a state of emergency, and is challenging it in court.But the country's justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa, told legislators on Wednesday that the ban would remain in force, the Herald newspaper said."That restriction will remain where there is breakdown of law and order," Chinamasa was quoted as saying. "Any (police commissioner) who fails to do that will lose his job."...http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/03/01/zimbabwe.protest.ban.reut/index.html?eref=rss_world

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday there was no evidence Japan coerced Asian women into working as sex slaves during World War II, backtracking from a landmark 1993 statement in which the government acknowledged that it set up and ran brothels for its troops. Abe’s comments to reporters came as a group of ruling party lawmakers urged the government to revise the so-called Kono Statement, which states that Japan’s wartime military sometimes recruited women to work in the brothels with coercion. “The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion,” Abe said. “We have to take it from there.” Historians say that up to 200,000 women, mainly from Korea and China, were forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers in brothels run by the military government as so-called “comfort women” during the war. Japanese leaders have repeatedly apologized, including former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who said in 2001 that he felt sincere remorse over ...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10625961/